Did President Donald Trump order sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to sign nondisclosure agreements before coming ashore? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that the president issued such an order. The claim appears to have originated with a Facebook account that identifies itself as "political parody" and "satire" in its posts and profile description.
The claim appeared in a post and image (archived here) by the @tempestkc account on Threads on Aug. 16, 2026. It read:
Trump announced today that personnel aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln will not be permitted to leave the ship until they sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements promising never to say anything "negative, nasty or insufficiently beautiful" about their deployment. It is WAY past time for the military to uphold their oaths!!!
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @tempestkc on Threads.)
The post that originated the claim appears to have come from the Karl E. Rominger Facebook page (archived here) and predates the Threads post by a day. It is a satire page. The page's intro states, "Political parody, sharp commentary. Former attorney and radio host. Follow me for daily #KarlTalks":
(Image source: Karl E. Rominger Facebook page.)
Original post
The original post (archived here) appeared on Facebook on Aug. 15, 2026. It read (Satire disclaimer highlighted in yellow):
TRUMP ORDERS USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN SAILORS TO SIGN NDAs [nondisclosure agreements] BEFORE COMING ASHORE
Donald Trump announced today that sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln will not be permitted to leave the ship until they sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements promising never to say anything "negative, nasty or insufficiently beautiful" about their deployment.
Especially off-limits: the mysterious laundry-room fire. Sailors are specifically forbidden from suggesting the fire was anything other than a completely ordinary laundry-room fire that absolutely, positively had nothing whatsoever to do with Iran. They are also forbidden from wondering aloud whether the carrier remained at sea while repairs were completed so nobody standing on a dock with a cellphone could photograph whatever definitely did not happen.
"Nothing happened," Trump explained. "And anybody saying something happened will spend the remainder of their natural life at Fort Leavenworth for talking about the thing that never happened."
Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance immediately described requiring thousands of returning sailors to sign secrecy agreements on the gangway as "totally normal military procedure." Hegseth added that anyone asking why such an agreement would be necessary if nothing happened clearly hates the troops.
Trump initially claimed the NDA was his idea before explaining that Susie Wiles developed it, Hegseth approved it, Rubio translated it into diplomatic language, and Vance volunteered to explain on television why Americans should never believe anything sailors tell their own families.
Because nothing says nothing happened quite like threatening everybody who was there if they talk about it.
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This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by Karl E. Rominger on Facebook.)
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and did not find any matching reports about the claim from credible news outlets using the search terms: "Trump," "USS Abraham Lincoln," "NDA," and "sailors."
